Cloud computing is a powerful tool driving innovation and growth for many organisations. As more and more modern enterprises realise its profound benefits, Quest general manager and sales director for EMEA Emerging Markets Amer Chebaro discusses how the firm is well-positioned to help enterprises seamlessly and safely transition to the cloud.
Can you please give an overview of Quest’s operations here in the region?
Established in 1987, Quest is a global software solutions firm headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California.
Our regional operation is based in Dubai where we cater to multiple markets in the Middle East, Turkey, Central and Eastern Europe and Africa.
A key focus for us is helping organisations accelerate their digital transformation journey and enable them to seamlessly move to the cloud as well as help them mitigate various security threats.
With the goal help to enterprises solve complex IT problems with simple solutions, Quest has multiple product sets that enable end-users to efficiently manage their infrastructures be it on-premise or in the cloud across multiple industries.
Over the past few years, we have seen a couple of big trends in the market where we believe Quest has played a key role. The first one is the consolidation of various large enterprises. For example, in the banking industry, we have seen mergers between some of the leading banks here in the region. We have been instrumental in enabling these organisations successfully merge their IT infrastructures without disrupting their business operations.
The second trend we have observed is the increase in cloud adoption here in the region. Quest is equipped with the right tools and skills to enable organisations to seamlessly move customers’ workloads from their data centres to the cloud while ensuring that the right safeguards are applied.
What has been the biggest challenge that organisations face when it comes to moving to the cloud? How can Quest help organisations tackle those challenges?
Initially, the biggest challenge here in the region is the lack of local data centres of some of the top multinational cloud providers. This has caused cloud adoption among Middle East organisations to lag behind.
However, as we have seen recently, that has changed, especially with the Amazon Web Services opening its data centre operations in Bahrain and Microsoft unveiling two new data centres in the UAE. In Saudi Arabia, several telcos have established world-class local data centres. As a result, we have seen regional businesses become more open to transition to the cloud.
Quest and One Identity provide tools and services that help companies move seamlessly to cloud environments without any disruption, in a cost-effective and secure way. We provide a seamless way for users to roll back workloads in case of server or link failure. More than saving time and effort, this process allows us to provide our customers with the confidence and safety that can help prevent unfortunate accidents during cloud migration.
How has the move to the cloud impacted how Middle East firms view data management and protection?
As organisations deal with increasingly complex IT systems they seek better ways to manage, monitor, and protect their data and cloud is the key. Cloud has enabled enterprises today to be more agile. With cloud, data can be easily and rapidly shared across multiple computing systems within an organisation or across third-parties. It also enables them to have a more flexible infrastructure that allows them to seamlessly scale up or down to handle bigger workloads. Organisations are increasingly seeing the true value of the cloud from cost-savings, to increased uptime to security.
Global cloud providers are investing significantly to ensure that their offerings are embedded with the right security measures to safeguard their customers’ data. This then drives enterprises to trust cloud platforms more and more.
Furthermore, the introduction of legislations such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have pushed both cloud providers and enterprise customers to be more responsible in using and safeguarding their data.
What is the biggest security concern that cloud-based organisations have?
For any organisation in the cloud, safeguarding sensitive data such as user identity is of utmost importance. Quest, through its One Identity offerings, provides comprehensive identity governance, access management and privileged management, and identity solutions that help organisations harness the value of their data unimpeded by cyber threats.
What is Quest’s main principle in helping organisations stay secure in the age of cloud?
Quest’s strategy is split into multiple points. First, we advise customers to maintain a “clean” active directory and we provide them with tools to ensure all user accounts there are for real active users. Second, we enable users to self-serve and use one set of credentials to access all their data. Third, we provide the organisation with tools to monitor those IDs and their activity on the network. This helps organisation manage and secure identities from the date of creation, through the life cycle, up until they decommission the user.
